Friday, February 19, 2010

What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all—looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12th should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it’s her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. In fact, she re-lives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she had ever imagined.

I am happy that I got the chance to read this book.
Would I have picked it up on my own were it not a B&N First Look?
To quote Sam: Maybe some time, but probably not. But like the book showed so well, a million different little things changed that, and I am genuinely happy that it did come into my hands. And that will make a lot more sense to you if you get to read the book, I promise.

At first, I hated the main characters like Lindsay, Ally, Elody, and Sam. I knew, and even still know, people like them. But the evolution of Sam, as well as her revelations on the connectedness of everything let my perceptions evolve along with her.

From the beginning, I was taken with how the author captured things just perfectly. Her descriptions are very current and authentic to contemporary high school life.
She gets the characters so right, down to their "unofficial" H.S. dress code of New Balance sneakers, Northface jackets, and other random things regarded by the characters as the right things to fit in.

I know that the main character's experience is sorta like those of the movies Groundhog Day or Sliding Doors, but really that's only a fraction of it. The amazing insight and realistic events, people, and conversations in the book are extraordinary, and even eerie. Readers will instantly connect with the familiarity of the social hierarchy and mean girls group.

The book is about finding out who you are, love, and redemption. Though it's a bit long, Oliver's writing is so great you hardly notice. I will say that the ending was a bit hard for me to accept but overall I really loved Before I Fall. Congratulations to Lauren Oliver on writing something so amazing!

Monday, February 15, 2010

In Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.

At turns harrowing and euphoric, Lingeris a spellbinding love story that explores both sides of love -- the light and the dark, the warm and the cold -- in a way you will never forget.

@Abigail_ATUF is hosting this amazing contest for a series that has gottten huge raves. Though I haven't read it yet, I'd sure love to win the set so I could read them in all in order nonstop :D So head on over if you'd love nothing more than to do the same.

I just about fainted when I saw this y'all! If you're a fan of Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games trilogy (and seriously, who isn't?) then hold on to your butts cuz Scholastic just released the cover of book 3!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Hey y'all! there's an awesOme book release party and contest with author Jeaniene Frost going on over at Bitten by Books!

IF your a fan of Jeaniene's Night huntress series, then head on over and check out her contest to win the first book in a spin-off series, First Drop of Crimson. Contest lasts until 2/5/10 at 11:59 pm Central andit is NOT mandatory you make a purchase to enter the contest. There are plenty of free ways to get extra entries as well.

One of the best and truest love stories I've read is the latest book I received through the Barnes&Noble First Look club.

About the book (from Barnes&Noble.com)

When Jonathan Cobb takes a sabbatical from teaching to go out and experience nature as Thoreau did in the early 19th century, he does not expect to meet the love of his life, any more than Mary expects to meet him. But from their first camp side meeting, they know they are soul mates.

Set against the sweeping natural backdrops of Maine's rugged backcountry, the exotic islands of Indonesia, Yellowstone National Park, and rural New England, nature plays a key role in their romance. But their story is tragic as well as inspiring as their perfect love falls beneath the shadow of her impending fatal illness, and he must help her make an important and difficult decision.

About the Author

Joseph Monninger has published several award-winning YA novels and three books of nonfiction, including the memoir Home Waters, and has been awarded two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. He lives and teaches in New Hampshire, where he also runs a dog sled team.

I just finished the book last night/this morning;it took me waaaay longer to finish this book than it should have simply because I did not want to separate Cobb and Mary. Their love story was so overwhelmingly real that I could hardly bear to face the end, which of course makes no sense as I already had when I began the book. But emotions, and especially love don't always make sense do they? As for reading the end first (the book begins with Mary's death), I have to say that doing that was the most brilliant thing done technically in this novel. It made it real from the beginning, no false hope about maybe she gets saved at the end, and it let me as a reader focus on what mattered; I got to focus on their story together, and not be distracted that this is fiction and so therefore think that a miracle was in store. Instead I focused on spending as much time with Mary as I could, alongside Cobb.

Reading Eternal on the Water was seriously like just listening to a new friend tell you his life story (thus far) because you've come to that point in the friendship where you really get to know each other; where you both begin to share that intimacy of real friendship by sharing real stories about the deeper points in your life, not just the so-called powerpoint version. And it's that intimacy that's so inherent in this book, that made me care, and respond as if Cobb were truly my real friend.

About Me

I'm just your average bookish girl that decided, on a whim, to try something new. I'm a common reader really, as Virginia Woolf might say; I spend my free time reading, in my "rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on".
I read and ❤ all kinds of books but I've got a real penchant for YA, Paranormal Fiction, and Romance.